1876.] OF THE HOUSE OF DELEGATES. 1331

voters furnished to and used by the Judges at the late elec-
tion in that city, that so many names of persons marked ia
the former as "dead," "transferred," or otherwise disquali-
fied, have been entered on the latter as duly "qualified vo-
ters," as to actually increase, by twenty thousand (20,000)
fraudulent names, the true number of bona fide legal voters,
and that it also appears from a comparison of the lists of
qualifier! voters and the poll-books returned, that a large
proportion of these fraudulent names were actually voted on,
some of them as often as eighteen (18) times, and that the
sum of all these frauds apparent on the face of these records
should approach or equal the number of twenty thousand,
(20,000) what remains, but to declare the election of Novem-
ber 2nd, 1875, in the city of Baltimore as the most stupen-
dous fraud of the kind ever perpetrated.

Yet these very things were substantially charged by the
contestants when they asked the Committee to go to Balti-
more and examine these records. Were the charges denied
and the proof challenged ? By no means. On the contrary,
as has already been shown, the respondents took ten (10)
days to prepare argument to show that the Cora mittee should
not look at the proof, and the Committee accordingly closed
its eyes.

Again, it appears from the records as far back as February
9th, that the Clerk of the Superior Court of Baltimore city,
contrary to law and precedent, (recognized and acted upon by
the Senate at this session in the election (contests pending in
that body from St. Mary's and Calvert counties,) refused to
produce the ballots cast at the election in question, and which
were by law in his custody, and that the action of the Com-
mittee was vainly invoked in the premises. After waiting
sometime for the Committee to respond to their request in
this matter, the contestants applied to the Hon. Geo. Wm.
Brown, Judge of the Baltimore City Court, for a mandamus
to compel the Clerk of the Superior Court to deliver, as re-
quired, the ballots in question, which, after full argument,
was granted, and the ballots ordered to be delivered. But
such had been the delay occasioned by the action of the Com-
mittee, that the Clerk, by au appeal, was able to wholly de-
feat the object of the proceedings.

It must be remembered in this connection, that under Ar-
ticle 35, Section 65, of the Code, which as has already been
shown, was early decided by the Committee to be the exclu-
sive law of the case, the ballots could only be delivered to a
Justice of the Peace taking examination, so that the trans-
mission of the testimony was necessarily delayed until the
decision of the mandamus case.